Raveling’s Podrace HuntDown
Title: Raveling’s Podrace HuntDown
Author: Michael "Gilliatt" Raveling
Date: Jun 6, 2001
Rating: 4.5
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Cards:
‘Starting(10)
Hunt Down and Destroy the Jedi
Epic Duel
Executer Meditation Chamber
Executer Holotheatre
Visage of the Emperor
Start Your Engines
Boonta Eve Podrace
Tattoine Podrace Arena
Sebulba’s Podracer
Imperial Arrest Order
Locations(3)
Hoth Docking Bay
Yavin 4 Docking Bay
Executer Docking Bay
Characters(13)
Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith
Lord Vader X 2
Vader w Saber X 2
Emperor Palpatine X 2
Mara Jade X 2
Grand Moff Tarkin
IG-88 with Riot Gun
Sim Aloo
Janus Greejatus
Effects(9)
Imperial Decree
Visage of the Emperor X 2
Battle Order
No Escape
Something Special Planned For Them
Secret Plans
You Cannot Hide Forever
Come Here You Big Coward
Interrupts(21)
Vaders Obsession X 2
Circle is Now Complete X 2
Omni Box/Its Worse X 2
Weapon Levitation X 2
Operational As Planned X 2
This is Some Rescure X 2
Vader’s Anger
Always Thinking with Your Stomach
Evader
Endor Occupation
I Have You Now
Imperial Barrier
You Swindled Me
Twilek Advisor
Focused Attack
Weapons/Vehicles(4)
Vaders Saber X 2
Mara’s Saber
Lift Tube ‘
Strategy: ‘
First Turn Strategy
Initiate a Podrace on your activate phase. If they are using Anakin’s Podracer then use two force to make their race total zero. If they are not using Anakin’s Podracer then don’t waste your force. Time to race. Draw your destiny.
Pull the Executer Docking Bay or if you have enough force for Vader pull another DB and put Vader there. Remember Visage damage. When they try to cancel Visage play This Is Some Rescue.
Nothing you can pull from your reserve so the first turn is pretty straitforward.
Midgame Strategy
Vader should go to his sites to drain. That way he has to stop you from draining there. Set up your destinies for Dueling using Janus and Operational as Planned. Get Vader his saber using Weapon Levitation. Once you have the dueling cards then duel. You should win the podrace unless they are doing some strange interrupts on you. Remember Visage every turn.
Lategame Strategy
You should have dueled one or two of his characters by now and that equates to big force loss for him. You should have won the podrace and that equates to big force loss for him. Visage should have been hitting him every turn which is big force loss for him. All that direct damage means you hardly need to drain or set up for a late game.
Match-ups
Versus Quiet Mining Colony Put Vader at their Cloud City site. Move him to the middle of their sites so you can easily move to the site where Luke or Obi is. The Lift Tube is in here to help you move to where Obi/Luke are to duel them. They are going to use Path of Least Resistance to keep their mains away from Vader but you can still catch them with the Lift Tube. Use Endor Celebration to cancel Cloud City Celebration when they get that set up.
Versus RST Put Vader at the Back Door or the Landing site as soon as possible. Chop their stupid scouts and Crix Madine. They probably have a deck full of wimpy scouts so just chop em up with Vader.
Versus Watch Your Step The drain at Kessel will hurt but you should have an easy time with the podrace. You also have to duel Luke whenever he comes down. Deploy Vader at the Tatooine DB so that you can move him to the Cantina to duel or to the Podracer Bay to duel. They will probably have Run Luke Run to cancel your dueler card and then they can play it from lost pile to cancel it again. But just keep trying to duel him until you can win. Use your You Swindled Me to try to retrieve the dueler card.
Versus Profit Winning the podrace should be key. Dueling Luke and Obi is also the key but they may have some anti-dueler cards. Wait till you have Tarkin and Focused Attack to duel.
Versus EBO Start IAO and draw for Imperial Decree. Early versions of the HuntDown podrace deck has problems versus EBO because there are no ships here. So use Imperial Decree along with holding two Rebel Sites to stop the drains. Their drains won’t beat your Visage and Saber drains if you can keep Decree in effect.
Card Choices
Lift Tube What keeps Hunt Down from dueling against QMC? It is Path of Least Resistance. With Lift Tube you can move over to their characters after they have already done a Path. Bewil works just as well but I wanted a high destiny to track and use with Podracing.
You Swindled Me Usually lets you retrieve cards, which is good. Also can let you activate some, which is good too. A pretty card efficient card. Try it before you knock it.
Evader Saves Vader from going to the lost pile, which you need. Gets rid of any revolutions, which you don’t need.
Always Thinking With Your Stomach Good for getting rid of anyone draining you somewhere they shouldn’t be. You can get it back with Podrace retrieval anyway.
Vader’s Anger Chopping guys with Vader’s Saber and Mara Jade’s saber is pretty important. How many times have you wished you could add one? this card does it. With a nice 5 destiny too. And you can also use it in a duel if you need to but it isn’t all that great for that part.
This Is Some Rescue You don’t want Vader placed Out Of Play do you? Keep him safe with this card. You can also keep Visage alive if they play the Combo card. Nice.
Come Here You Big Coward Don’t let them drain at your Executer sites.
Battle Order In case you’re in a tight drain race you can slap this down and let Visage do its damage. Might be the first slot taken out for another Focused Attack though.
Questions
Why not start Watto’s Box? If you lose, you lose big and can’t recover. Not starting with three effects really sucks and at least you can start with IAO the way I have it.
No more Podracer interrupts? The destiny average in this deck is enough to win a normal podrace versus Anakin’s Podrace. If the light side player is going to devote ten slots to podracing to beat you then let them have the stupid race. You can recover from Dueling and Visage.
What about Visage damage? The reason I never liked Hunt Down in the past was that if you had bad luck with early Visage damage you couldn’t recover. With Podracing you can retrieve all the cards you lost with HuntDown while you set up Vader at a site to be nice and safe. Early Visage damage can get retrieved so you can survive not drawing Vader for a turn or two.
How do I win the podrace? Some tips. If you get Sim Aloo you can look at their top destiny and manipulate that. If you draw Start Your Engines you use that on your last turn of podracing to look at your top cards and put the highest one back down. Let the natural destiny average win you the podrace with only a few tricks to help you come out on top.
How do you survive in a match up versus an all space deck? You have some good force drain potential and you have Visage. You also have a Podrace. That is a lot of direct damage.
Why no Inserts? Because Kohman already did it. Otherwise there probably would be inserts in here. Actually, if you run inserts you are counting on something that is getting harder and harder to count on. The light side player has nice characters that are high destiny. You also lose all kinda of neat fighting characters that the dark side has to use. Playing with IG-88, Janus, and Sim is preferable than counting on an iffy strategy like inserts.
Where is Darth Maul? Darth Maul is weak. He is super expensive to deploy and is only immune to less than five. That means any stray five in your opponents deck is going to kill off a character that might cost you up to ten force to deploy if they get Goo Nee Tay out. Plus if you use his gametext to initiate a duel then Hunt Down is placed out of play. That is pretty bad.
Why am I posting this deck? I think you will see this deck at plenty of the big tournaments coming up. Why would you want it to be a surprise when it does come?
Any other questions?
Thanks to Justin Alfs for showing me the power of this deck.
Michael Raveling ‘